How to Add MyFreeCopyright To Your WordPress Blog

The directions are specific to WordPress.com, but will work for any blog or website. It’s also a prime example of how to use the WordPress Widget to add text to your sidebar. The code used in the example is straight HTML and not JavaScript, which is not permitted with WordPress.com blogs.

MyFreeCopyright.com offers a simple way of tracking potential copyright violations of your blog’s content. It isn’t protection. It merely advises people that your content is copyrighted, which it is by default, and alerts you when a possible copyright violation is found through your feed content compared to other sites. You can then take appropriate action against the copyright violator.

What MyFreeCopyright does best is to remind and educate everyone on the importance of copyright, how to protect your content from copyright violations, and help you decide what your copyright policy should be.

If you want control over your blog content, and you want people to ask first before using your content without permission, you have to be clear in your copyright policy. If you want to give your blog content, images, and multimedia away for free without permission, you also have to make that very clear as you are the copyright holder and can do whatever you want, but reading minds isn’t part of the process. :D

There is a great big button with “PROTECT” on their site. But check the faq:

MyFreeCopyright.com does not provide legal advice or legal services to help you. It does provide a public date registration service, which can be used to enforce your copyright; however, that responsibility is up to you.

So this is like hiring a security guard to watch for people stealing things from your house but when they do he’ll just point and say “Hey, look!”

The use of that ‘Protect’ therefore seems very poor considering the people they are marketing themselves at. And they charge too.
Use the service but be very sure what it is you are getting – a dog that barks but does nothing else.

I kind of think that there is value in simple notification. Kind of a “sunlight is the best disinfectant” concept. Of course, it only works if people have some residual sense of shame for violating your copyright. Last I looked, which was a couple of years ago, every music CD is clearly labeled that it may not be duplicated (ie ripped).

I think nothing will “protect” from content thieves. I think that education will inform others about the rules of copyright and intellectual property and tools like these make it easier to track the ignorant and educate them. :D

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